Model and design of an adaptive hybrid scheme for secure deletion of data in consumer electronics

Abstract

As more mobile storage devices are used in consumer electronics, possibility of user confidential data leakage increases. To make things worse, data of deleted file in mobile storage such as USB drives can be easily recovered and, thus, can be vulnerable to data leakage. To prevent this type of data leakage, efficient secure deletion techniques are required and we present two secure deletion techniques, namely block cleaning and zero overwriting, for Flash memory storage. Also, we propose cost and benefit models of both techniques. The models imply an existence of an efficient adaptive hybrid secure deletion scheme that applies one of the techniques based on their costs and benefits at given data arrangements. Experimental results measured on an Embedded board show that the adaptive hybrid scheme deletes data securely and efficiently for various data patterns on Flash memory storage.